


To See The Stars

by hollo



Series: Pavor Nocturnus: A Voltron Horror Anthology [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood, Death, Gore, Horror, M/M, Other, Space Horror, voltron horror zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 17:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14061936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollo/pseuds/hollo
Summary: ~A Voltron Space Horror~Everyone had been something - had been sad or angry, crying or gritting their teeth, but he had only been able to stare down at Keith’s face as the cryopod’s surface materialized and think that everything he’d ever read or heard had been a damn lie.Keith didn’t look like he was sleeping. He just looked like he was dead.





	To See The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is featured in the Voltron Horror Zine, but as we have gotten the OK to post works I'm posting the longer version here. It's....wow it's been six months since I wrote this!
> 
> Please mind the tags!
> 
> If you enjoy any of my Horror Writing please feel free to follow my writing blog [HolloWrites on Tumblr](http://hollowrites.tumblr.com) to get updates on my progress writing the Voltron Horror Collection!

He saw it all in startling clarity –

The pupils, widened larger than he had ever seen before. The drooping eyelids, casting shadows over the grey of the irises, darkening them almost to black. The exaggerated paleness of the skin, the hair falling over his forehead made darker because of it.

“Lance? Why isn’t Keith responding? What’s going on?”

If there had been any mercy in life, it would have blurred his vision with the tears that gathered in his eyes, but they fell instead, hot trails down his cheeks that left his vision crystal clear as the voices over the coms continued to barrage him with questions.

When he answered, Lance couldn’t recognize his own voice; it sounded hollow, sterile, distant-

“The Ion canon damaged Red’s hull,” He said, the barest of tremors touching his words. One of his hands gripped at the console, the other was resting on Keith’s shoulder. Wires from the torn ceiling above dangled around them. Across from him, the cockpit wall was torn open, sparks jumping from broken circuits inside. “Pieces of the walls broke off during the attack, they…”

His eyes fell to the chunk of metal that had crushed itself into the pilot’s chair and with it, into Keith. The torn edge of it had punctured his side and deep into his body. His blood had slid out along a crevice in the metal to drip into a pool at his feet.

“...they compromised his life support system.”

He couldn’t tell if Keith had been awake when the metal had cut into him. He wanted to believe that he wasn’t - that he’d been knocked out when the ion cannon hit, that he hadn’t been aware that his life was leaking out of him, that he hadn’t spent his last few moments awake and in terror.

“What does that mean, Lance?”

Pidge’s voice shook with emotion, but Lance couldn’t find the energy to care anymore. He couldn’t find the energy to care about anything anymore.

“It means he’s dead.”

-

 

At the cusp of too late and too early, that part of the night cycle where the concept of time had no meaning, Lance lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling of his room. Sleep wasn’t coming. It had barely come in the nights after that battle; his mind often strayed of its own will to the medical bay, to the almost hidden, unassuming doorway at the far back. Keith’s body lay behind that doorway, locked away in a horizontally positioned, darkened cryopod that could only ever have been meant for one thing. Shiro had promised, in a voice both solemn and choked with grief as they all watched the cryopod slide shut, that they’d bring him back home.

Lance couldn’t tell if grief had gotten hold of him or not. He couldn’t tell if he was sad or angry, couldn’t really tell if he should act in some specific way to show it. After the tears he’d shed in Red’s cockpit he’d found himself strangely detached. There was nothing inside, where he’d expected all that emotion to be.

Everyone had been something - had been sad or angry, crying or gritting their teeth, but he had only been able to stare down at Keith’s face as the cryopod’s surface materialized and think that everything he’d ever read or heard had been a damn lie.

Keith didn’t look like he was sleeping. He just looked like he was dead.

He must’ve slipped into sleep eventually, a strange sort of sleep where nothing much changed at first. The ceiling was still above him but it seemed to morph slowly, turning vivid shades of colors he’d never seen before. He thought he saw light flare suddenly, a bright burning light that hadn’t blinded him but had set every single part of the room into sharp relief. He thought he saw something moving in that brightness, but it was gone a moment later.

His eyes fluttered at the sudden darkness. He might’ve woken up, or he might not have, he couldn’t really tell the difference anymore. He felt numb, distant, and the air seemed heavy, a whole lot of nothing pressing in on him. He couldn’t tell if he was dreaming. He couldn’t tell if he had his eyes closed or not. He couldn’t tell, he couldn’t.... He groaned, rolling over wearily. His bangs shifted over his face, longer than he’d ever let them grow out before, and they tickled against his eyelids as he tried to settle back down. One eyelid twitched in reaction, once, twice – he tried to ignore it, he could feel sleep creeping up on him, spreading across his body bit by bit as he relaxed into its hold.

His eye kept twitching, and though sleep lay heavy in his limbs it was almost enough to keep him from drifting away and he wished it would just stop-

Fingers slid softly across his forehead, brushing the hair out of his eyes. He murmured a sleepy thanks, for the moment transported a galaxy away, years back, to when he’d climb into his parents bed and fall asleep nestled between them, his father humming a lullaby as his mother brushed the hair of his forehead to drop a kiss in its place.

Lance’s eyes snapped awake. Darkness greeted him, and above the sound of his own hushed breaths there was only silence. 

He stared, wide eyed and tense, pulse racing, wondering about that touch. It had felt so real, but-

A noise broke the quiet, the soft yet recognizable sound of his desk chair rolling a few paces across the floor. It was an almost unnoticeable sound normally but within that darkness and that silence it sent a shiver down his spine. He bolted upright in the bed, eyes turned towards his desk, but he couldn’t see much more than vague shapes in the dark. The safety lights at the base of his bed could only illuminate so much - but he forced his eyes to focus. With difficulty, he could make out the shape of his desk, and several feet away his chair. Laying on the ground between the two was another shape, bulky and unrecognizable, and his heart pounded harder in his chest as some type of wild, darkness induced paranoia gripped him. He’d always been a bit afraid of what could lurk in the dark growing up - the monsters under his bed, the bogeymen in his closet, the creepy little ghosts that only lived in the cracks of nearly closed doors leading into the cellar. He’d thought he’d grown out of all those fears, having been faced with far more real and tangible fears in his time as a paladin, but they all rushed back to him now as his eyes focused unwaveringly on the dark heap on the floor.

Slowly, hesitantly, reminding himself that he was a paladin, he was  _ brave _ , he’d fought monsters and robots, he was  _ not _ going to be done in by some random shadow in the night, he crept out of his bed and made his way to it. Wincing in anticipation, he reached out a foot and gently poked a toe at the shape. It was soft, yielding under his touch, and with a sudden burst of relieved realization he remembered that he had thrown his jacket onto his chair before going to change into his pajamas. It was just his jacket, he thought with a grin. His jacket. That he’d left on his chair - but which was now on his floor.

Frowning, he turned his gaze to the chair. It stood only a foot away, looking as innocent and harmless as a chair could. But he’d heard it rolling across the floor, and he  _ knew _ he’d left his jacket on its seat. He was pretty sure of it, at least. Moderately sure…

The hiss of his door sounded suddenly, the shock of it sending another shudder up his spine, and he yelped as he spun to face it. He might’ve expected someone to come in - but instead the door closed the last couple of inches as he watched.

The shudder that had raced up his spine raced back down then, leaving behind a shaky, nervous feeling trembling within it.

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought -  _ he thought _ \- that in the dark space between the door and the door jamb, in those spare few seconds, he’d seen something  _ move. _

“It’s nothing,” His voice shook, doing little to dispel the unease that was slowly creeping out of his spine and into each of his limbs. “You’ve been stressed out and you’re having some weird night… hallucinations… Just go back to bed, everything is fine.”  
He licked his lips, shifting a few steps forward, telling himself again, “Go back to bed.”  
Somehow, he found himself closing the distance to the door instead, his steps hesitant but deliberate. The last time something had seemed off, the ship was going haywire and trying to kill them all - and while he’d like nothing more than to go back to bed and pretend everything was all right, the possibility of another deadly malfunction was suddenly becoming very real, and much more pressing.

“One look,” He said, taking a deep breath as he reached the door, promising himself that he’d just make sure everything looked fine and he’d get right back to sleep. The sensor light blinked once as he waved his hand over it, and the door slid open with a hiss to reveal the dimly lit hallway outside. Steeling himself, Lance stepped out of the room.

The hallway was eerily silent. For a moment he felt like he’d walked into… he couldn’t say, into something that was cloudy and amorphous, more a feeling than anything else. For a second, it felt like he wasn’t really himself. He shook his head, and took a shuddering breath that felt like it inflated his lungs farther than they could go. His senses swirled, but as he exhaled they seemed to settle and clear. His gaze turned to his surroundings, looking to the left instinctively, towards the closest airlocks, just in case, before swinging back around to the ri-

Movement.

It couldn’t have been a trick of shadows, not this time. Not when the figure seemed to be  _ waiting _ until his eyes were nearly on it until it moved. Still his eyes could barely catch up - he spun, heart pounding, but it was already gone, the only implication it had even been there the quiet hiss of a door closing.

His heart still pounded but his breath had caught in his throat, his eyes unable to look away from the door that had closed before his eyes - the door directly to the right of his own. 

_ Keith’s door. _

Slowly, Lance approached it. Emotion roiled inside of him - fear the most apparent but also something like anger, something like hope, pooling within him, boiling over and over again. He didn’t know what he’d see when he opened that door, didn’t know what he’d hoped to see, but still he stepped in front of it, his bare feet feeling the unnatural chill of the floor. His head was pounding in time with his heart, everything he was felt somehow so, so far away. He couldn’t really feel anything, other than his heart racing, other than the emotions flaring within him. Everything was becoming distant - his skin, his bones, his hand as it lifted to wave in front of the door’s sensor.

His heart stuttered as the sensor light flashed. 

The door slid open.

And there, before him, dimly lit by the lights shining softly from beneath the bed, was the dark silhouette of a person.

Lance didn’t think he knew how to breathe anymore. His entire body trembled as his eyes widened, his voice shook beyond any realm of control as he spoke one word, 

“Keith?”

The figure before him shifted, turned slowly - slowly - and as they did it almost looked like they were bathed in some unnatural light, their features suddenly not only visible but clear and sharp within the darkness. Dark hair, curling at the back of their neck, pale skin, dark expressive eyes that looked back to Lance with no small amount of sadness, and just a hint of regret.

“Sorry,” Keith’s voice was quiet, but it filled the room, filled Lance’s ears, seemed to resonate down to his marrow. “I think I made a bit of a mess.”  
Keith gave Lance a bashful grin, like a child who’d accidentally spilled the paint on the carpet, and motioned to the floor. 

Maybe Lance should’ve been shocked by the amount of blood, by the smears of it dirtying the floor between them, but somehow it didn’t seem out of sort. He looked back at Keith, noting that he was still dressed in his under armor, but though the black material could hide the blood on his body it couldn’t hide the massive, gaping wound that cleaved his left side. They’d removed the metal piece when they were pulling Keith out of Red’s cockpit, and without it he could see the damage to Keith’s body clearly. Bits of muscle and skin trailed down over his hip, some damaged organ, deep red and dripping fluid, hung from beneath a gleaming, pink stained rib - and none of it shocked him. Keith was dead, after all.

“You’re dead,” Lance told him, maybe to reassure himself. Maybe to hear Keith deny it. 

But the sadness in Keith’s eyes only grew at his words, his skin seeming to turn paler at the mere mention of it. More translucent. 

“I know.” He admitted quietly, his voice holding more pain than Lance could’ve imagined. “I don’t want to go yet, Lance, I’m… I’m not ready to go yet.”

He looked at Lance imploringly, depths in his eyes that Lance couldn’t see the ends of. There were stars there, maybe. Maybe. Lance couldn’t feel where his skin ended, where his body was. Maybe somewhere among them.

“Would you walk with me? Just… just for a little bit…” Keith took a hesitant step forward. The organ within his rib cage swung slightly at the movement, dripping something dark and viscous, and a small, shy smile came across his face. “Just until I’m ready.”

“Sure, uh...Where do you want to go?” Lance asked. Keith’s face brightened, his grin growing wide as his eyes seemed to darken.

“To see the stars.”

And then Keith was right there in front of him, a step away, his hand held out towards him, and Lance found he couldn’t refuse - he took that hand, surprised to find that as pale as Keith was, as seemingly cold he looked, there was warmth there, in his touch. 

“Do you want to go up to the observation deck?” Lance asked as they stepped outside of the room, the door sliding shut behind them. The warmth from Keith’s hand was creeping up his arm with each step, chasing away the fear and uncertainty he’d felt only moments before. He smiled at Keith, and Keith’s grin turned mischievous, a secretive sort of smirk that Lance had never seen before but thought looked good on him.

“I have a better idea.”

They walked through the hallways, and though Keith left a trail of blood behind him Lance found he didn’t mind. Keith was there, with him, not locked away in a cryopod - he was  _ there _ , tugging him along, eyes shining brightly in the dimness of the hallways, a soft smile on his face as he led him along. Keith was with him, and Lance was… was happy, the warmth inside of him pulsing with emotions he couldn’t put a name to.

“I’m sorry,” He said suddenly, that rush of emotion bringing the words out of him when his eyes found Keith’s wound again. “It all happened so fast, I couldn’t-we couldn’t…”

Keith turned to look at him, his footsteps slowing, a curious expression on his face.

“We didn’t even get a chance to say good bye.”

The curious look on Keith’s face faded to one of understanding, pain showing in his eyes even as he squeezed Lance’s hand and gave him a reassuring smile.

“It’s okay, I… I know how you all felt,” Keith said softly, that grin turning secretive, the depth in his eyes suddenly growing deeper and darker. “Besides, it’ll all be okay soon. Very soon…”

He pulled at Lance’s hand again, picking up the pace until Lance was stumbling behind him, down hallways and corridors and past doorways until Lance couldn’t make out where they were going. Finally, Keith slowed them down by an airlock, and though a shiver raced feebly down Lance’s spine he followed as Keith led the way inside. 

“Look.” He breathed, pulling them over to the wide windows of the outer door, and Lance looked.

After all that time in space, drifting from solar system to solar system, Lance still couldn’t get enough of it all. The depths of it, the stars that spread across the darkness, glittering in a myriad of colors that he’d never imagined seeing before. They were floating through a young galaxy right then, the gaseous mixtures circling the star glowing in a variety of colors, soft yet vibrant. His heart ached, looking at it, at the way everything seeing so vibrant and glowing and alive, and he turned to Keith, 

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”

But he was alone. 

_ It was a dream, _ his mind whispered. The realization hit him suddenly and sharply, his breath drawn from him in a gasp as his eyes snapped open. He was cold, very cold, from the tips of his fingers down to his toes, the chill spreading goosebumps across his skin.

It had to have all been a dream. A dream so real that in his stressed state he’d sleepwalked through the castle at the request of a figment of his dazed imagination. There was no other explanation for why Lance suddenly found himself alone in the airlock, the vast expanse of star-studded space before him. 

Keith wasn’t there. He never was.

The shock, the loss of it, hit him hard in the gut, wrenched half a sob from him. He wanted Keith to be there he wanted - and maybe he wanted it badly enough, but he could almost imagine the feeling of Keith’s hand in his, fingers curled against each other. His breathing shuddered, his eyes closing as the tears within them welled up.

He smiled, imagining for a few more seconds that this was real, that Keith was there, that –

The fingers he’d imagined circling his hand tightened suddenly, sharply. Lance gasped, eyes fluttering open to the view of the airlock windows again. Space continued to be dark and massive before him but there was something in the reflection – there, beside him, something pale and vaguely humanoid shaped-

His hand tugged to the side, the other’s grip painful and strong, jerking Lance a few steps as his hand was slapped against the airlock controls. The chill of the air became icy, Lance’s heart stuttered as his eyes snapped to his hand on the controls.

Nothing was holding it, but he couldn’t – he struggled to remove it but the pressure wouldn’t let up. The controls lit up under his touch, the pressure on the back of his hand so strong it was shooting pain through his arm – and around him, the mechanized voice of the ship’s systems began to countdown

“No,” he whimpered, gripping his trapped arm with his free arm and tugging. “No, no, no, please, not again. Not again!”

The countdown refused to stop, ticks counting down with terrifying precision, and he screamed, his bare feet slipping across the floor as he tried to pull free. He cast about for some way to escape, for some way to fix this, get out of this, but he was alone. 

Alone, except for the stars shining in the darkness beyond - and the pale reflection that still crowded next to his own in the airlock window.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please leave a review if you did! I'd love to hear what you thought.


End file.
